NRAO Home  >  Green Bank  |  Wiki Topic:    GB > Observing > CommissioningMeetings > CommissioningMeeting06Jan13

Changes | Index | Contents | Search | Go

GBT Operations & Commissioning Meeting

13 January 2006

No meeting - reports only

AGENDA

• Az Track, Antennae Report -- Bob
• Observing News -- Ron
• Scheduling Status -- Carl
• Microwave Electronics Status -- Roger
• Digital Electronics Status -- Rich
• Software Status -- Mark
• Change Control Committee -- John
• Pulsar Related -- Scott
• MIT/LL 43m Project -- Glen
• Any other Business

Az Track, Antennae Report -- Bob

Observing News -- Ron

This week we supported 17 projects, including 2 VLBI, in 22 observing sessions. Average setup time was 20 minutes. The telescope was also scheduled for 20 hrs of Ka/CCB commissioning, 1 hrs of maintenance, 11 hrs of PTCS tests, 4 hrs of software tests, and 2.5 hrs of receiver checkouts.

Lost time was larger than we've been seeing and is due to myriad of causes. About 13.5 hrs, or 8.8% of the time scheduled for observing or commissioning, was lost. Because of the diverse nature of the problems, there's no good way to categorize them. Here's my best shot:

• Computing/ScanLog Files/NFS : 7.8 hrs
• General Astrid : 1.3 hrs
• Astrid/BCPM : 1.3 hrs
• Myriad M&C/ScanCoordinator problems : 2.2 hrs
• Snow : 0.3 hrs
• Spectrometer : 0.3 hrs
• All others : 0.3 hrs

A fair fraction of Astrid/Computing/ScanCoordinator/Antenna problems occurred during observing setups, which extended setups beyond what we have been seeing. There was also a number of azimuth overcurrents that worried staff but didn't result in lost time.

Scheduling Status -- Carl

Last Week
=========

Observations for proposals
   GBT05C-051, GBT05C-041, BM238     , 
   GBT06A-044, GBT05C-031, GBT05A-011, 
   GBT05C-021, BK127     , GBT05C-022, 
   GBT04C-043, GBT05C-034, GBT05C-056, 
   GBT05C-023, GBT05C-057, GBT06A-039, 
   GBT05C-004, GBT06A-008, GBT01A-005, 
   GBT05C-009

Completed proposals
   GBT05C-041, BM238, GBT05C-031, 
   GBT05C-034, GBT06A-008

Next Week
=========
Observations scheduled for **
  GBT06A-032 [ P ] Jim Braatz
       A Search for the First SiO Megamaser              
  GBT06A-044 [ P ] Jeremy Darling
       Intrinsic HI and OH Absorption in Compact Radio   
       Sources at High Redshift                          
  GBT05B-042 [F  ] Michael Kramer
       Timing and General Relativity in the Double       
       Pulsar System                                     
  GBT05C-021 [F B] Marc-Antoine Miville-Deschenes
       Characterizing Dust in High Velocity Clouds       
  GBT05C-033 [FP ] Marko Krco
       Structure and Formation of the Filamentary Cloud  
       L204                                              
  GBT05C-056 [ PB] Paulo Freire
       A GBT S-band Globular Cluster Survey: Phase B     
  GBT05C-046 [F  ] Ingrid Stairs
       Timing of a Relativistic Binary and other Pulsars 
       from the Arecibo PALFA Survey                     
  GBT05C-004 [ P ] Chris O'Dea
       Does Radio Power Depend on Black Hole Mass ?      
  GBT06A-018 [ P ] Joe McMullin
       Isotopic Abundances in Planetary Nebulae          
  GBT05C-037 [F B] Nissim Kanekar
       Measuring changes in fundamental constants with   
       redshifted OH  lines                              
  GBT05C-016 [ P ] Alberto Bolatto
       A Search for HI and Molecular Absorption in an    
       Extremely Reddened QSO                            
  GBT01A-005 [ P ] Barry Turner
       A High-resolution Spectral Survey Of Tmc-1 At     
       Q-band                                            
  GBT05C-019 [F B] Tim Robishaw
       The Galactic Arachnid in the Ursa Major Loop      
  GBT05C-009 [F B] Gilles Joncas
       GBT HI Observations of the DRAO Deep Field:       
       Determining Foregrounds for Planck                
** Scheduled as F-ixed, P-rimary, B-ackup

Contact Information for 01/26/2006 - 02/09/2006
=======================================
Proposal   PI                 Bands Email [NRAO contact]    
---------- ------------------ ----- --------------------
GBT06A-062 Jean-Luc Margot    X     jlm@astro.cornell.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT05A-041 Paul Demorest      L8    demorest@astron.berkeley.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-043 Larry Morgan       L     lmorgan@nrao.edu [Larry Morgan]
GBT04C-050 Wendy Lane         A     wendy.peters@nrl.navy.mil [Rick Fisher]
GBT06A-066 David Nidever      L     dnidever@virginia.edu [Jay Lockman]
GBT06A-044 Jeremy Darling     A     jdarling@origins.colorado.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT05C-042 Scott Ransom       S     sransom@nrao.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-056 Paul Kondratko     K     pkondrat@cfa.harvard.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT05A-011 Scott Ransom       S     sransom@nrao.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-001 Vincent Fish       C     vfish@nrao.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT04C-031 Paul Kondratko     K     pkondrat@cfa.harvard.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT05C-010 Yi-nan Chin        K     einmann@astro.phys.tku.edu.tw [Dana Balser]
GBT06A-014 Andrea Tarchi      K     atarchi@ira.cnr.it [Jim Braatz]
GBT05B-034 Ingrid Stairs      L     istairs@astro.ubc.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT05C-023 Fernando Camilo    S     fernando@astro.columbia.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT05C-056 Paulo Freire       S     pfreire@naic.edu [Scott Ransom]
GBT06A-027 Karen Masters      L     kmasters@cfa.harvard.edu [Karen O'Neil]
GBT05C-057 Regina Jorgenson   A     regina@physics.ucsd.edu [Frank Ghigo]
GBT04B-014 Paul Kondratko     KU    pkondrat@cfa.harvard.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT04A-027 Brian Mason        B     bmason@nrao.edu [Brian Mason]
GBT05C-015 Chris Henkel       K     p220hen@mpifr-bonn.mpg.de [Jim Braatz]
GBT04A-038 Brian Mason        B     bmason@nrao.edu [Brian Mason]
GBT05C-037 Nissim Kanekar     A     nkanekar@nrao.edu [Glen Langston]
GBT06A-009 Jim Condon         K     jcondon@nrao.edu [Jim Braatz]
GBT01A-005 Barry Turner       Q     bturner@nrao.edu [Frank Ghigo]
BB191      Richard Barvainis  C     rbarvai@nsf.gov []
GBT05B-019 Mallory Roberts    S     roberts@physics.mcgill.ca [Scott Ransom]
GBT05C-018 Tim Robishaw       L     robishaw@astro.berkeley.edu [Toney Minter]
GBT05C-019 Tim Robishaw       L     robishaw@astro.berkeley.edu [Toney Minter]

Scheduled hours [backup]
========================
Category/Month-> January   February  March     April     
    Astronomy ~  548 [270] 541 [368] 595 [408] 511 [414] 
  Maintenance ~   43 [043]  29 [051]  23 [077]  16 [102] 
  Test & Comm ~  153 [021] 103 [041] 100 [040] 141 [035] 
  Un-assigned ~    0         0        27        54       

Proposal Checkouts
==================
Awaiting checkout - 0
  Active checkout - 2
          On Hold - 23
         Schedule - 82
        Completed - 438


Current backlog [hours prior to 05C*] = 765
   [2001:21(1), 2002:60(1), 2003:19(1), 2004:220(12), 2005:445(17)]
Total time to discharge [hours] = 3667
* Includes projects that are on hold for trimester 05C

Microwave Electronics Status -- Roger

Digital Electronics Status -- Rich

Digital Electronics Status 06 Jan 2006 – 12 Jan 2006

***Operations, Problem summary***

No problems.

***Development***

Cal-Tech Continuum Backend (CCB):

No progress to report.

Long Term Accumulator

Some work has been on-going to isolate the cause of random errors on one of the spare LTAs. Discussions on progress and possible avenues for testing were held with Ford and McCullough. So far, we’ve found a couple of ways to make things worse!

***Plans***

- Update CCB documentation - Support commissioning efforts - work on phase switch transients in the CCB

Software Status -- Mark

Today ends Week 2 of 6 in the first development cycle of 2006 which can be viewed at PlanOfRecordC12006.

Work on the major changes in our infrastructure continues (moving to a different OS, upgrading the C++ compiler, and upgrading the Python environment). A schedule for the OS change is described in a Summary Status table, to allow all of the Ygor system to compile under GCC 3.x a total of 891 files have been modified, and we are generating a sparrow source directory to test the new Python environment.

Modification requests are being written for quality checks and GFM upgrades for the CCB. The Abort and Stop functions in Astrid have been upgraded in preparation to their enhancement to handle spigot observing. We have added new FITS table to Penn Array archiver, and provided support for dwell modes. Most of the IFPath portion of the gbtstatus upgrades are completed.

Two bugs have been major concerns this cycle. The first is control system "stalls" causing devices to miss scan start times. This behavior started with the loss of the vortex data disks and the resulting adjustments. So far we have spent 48 staff-hours on the problem both on operation support and analysis. The second is the incomplete preparation or activation of the telescope system following extended configurations. We have spent 18 staff-hours on this problem, but we understand it now, have an interim fix in place, and hope to have a permament fix in place for the next release.

Change Control Committee -- John

Pulsar Related -- Scott

MIT/LL 43m Project -- Glen

Any other Business

-- RichardPrestage - 12 Jan 2006